Ohio woman gets over 3 years in terror funds case (AP)

TOLEDO, Ohio – A woman who pleaded guilty with her husband in a plot to ship money to a Mideast terrorist group did it to make money and not for political purposes, a federal judge said after sentencing her to more than three years in prison Wednesday.

Amera Akl told the judge that she knew up to $1 million would be going to Hezbollah, a Lebanese group the U.S. government lists as a terrorist organization.

But her attorney maintained that she took part because she was in financial trouble. "Her real goal was to keep some, as much of the money that she could," said attorney Sanford Schulman.

An FBI informant approached Akl with an offer to send money to Hezbollah and give her a share for helping transport it, federal prosecutors said. She then brought her husband into the plan and they both had a role in making arrangements, said Justin Herdman, an assistant U.S. attorney.

"She never resisted this proposal," Herdman said. "She never walked away."

Akl, 38, and her husband, Hor Akl, planned for a year how to send the money overseas, prosecutors said.

The informant provided the couple with $200,000 for the first shipment that was to be hidden in an SUV before they were arrested a year ago.

Mrs. Akl's role was vital, Herdman said, noting that she put on rubber gloves to handle the money and shopped for auto parts where they could hide the money. "She did it for greed," Herdman said.

Akl's attorney acknowledged she took the bait, but he insisted she was not a terrorist.

"She's an easy target," Schulman said. "She's not the Hezbollah you and I imagine."

The Akls, dual citizens of the United States and Lebanon, both pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Hor Akl also pleaded guilty to money laundering, bankruptcy fraud and perjury charges.

Both agreed to a plea deal to avoid a possible 40-year sentence.

U.S. District Judge James Carr sentenced Amera Akl to three years and four months, six months short of the maximum.

The judge told Akl that the couple's three children now will go through school with classmates who will look at them differently and subject them to ridicule. "That's the real shame," he said, shaking his head.

The judge asked her several questions about whether she knew where the money was going and how much she intended to keep.

"We were going keep some of the money," she said.

Akl sat with her husband before the hearing. He leaned forward and looked down when the judge announced her sentence. A date has not been set for his sentencing. He faces up to seven years.

"Money is the lifeblood of terrorist organizations, and stopping the flow is a key component to choking off these organizations," said Steven Dettelbach, the U.S. attorney for the northern Ohio.

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NYC synagogue terror plot suspects due in court (AP)

NEW YORK – Two men charged with scheming to blow up synagogues in New York City are due in court in the unusual terrorism case, brought under state laws.

Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh have a court date Wednesday. Both have denied initial charges including conspiracy as a crime of terrorism.

Prosecutors have said the 26-year-old Ferhani has been indicted. They will likely disclose Wednesday what charges the grand jury found appropriate. Prosecutors haven't said whether the 20-year-old Mamdouh has been indicted.

Prosecutors say an undercover detective secretly recorded both men discussing their hatred of Jews, their views that Muslims were mistreated and their interest in attacking a synagogue. Prosecutors say Ferhani was arrested last month buying guns, ammunition and an inert grenade, and Mamdouh was picked up soon afterward.

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5 Muslim immigrants appeal NJ terror convictions (AP)

PHILADELPHIA – Wiretaps obtained under a Patriot Act provision aimed at gathering foreign intelligence wrongly helped convict Muslim immigrants in a domestic criminal case, defense lawyers argued Monday in U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia.

The lawyers represent five young men convicted of plotting a deadly strike at a New Jersey military base. Prosecutors call evidence in the three-month trial overwhelming and the two wiretaps in question incidental to the conviction.

Defense lawyer Michael E. Riley argued otherwise.

"We don't know which of the nails in the coffin were the final nails in the coffin (for jurors)," he said.

A federal jury in Camden, N.J., convicted the men — Mohamad Shnewer, Serdar Tatar, and brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka — in December 2008 of conspiring to kill U.S. military personnel at Fort Dix. All but Tatar are serving life terms.

Prosecutors charged that the Philadelphia-area residents, inspired by al-Qaida, had taken training trips to the Pocono Mountains and scouted out Fort Dix, an Army base in New Jersey used primarily to train reservists for duty in Iraq, and other sites.

"The issue the jury had to decide was, where they serious? Did they mean to attack soldiers, or were they just talking to blow off steam?" Assistant U.S. Attorney Norman Gross said Monday, summarizing the crux of the complex case.

Prosecutors concede the group did not necessarily have a specific plan to attack Fort Dix and were probably months away from an attack. The jury acquitted the men of attempted murder charges.

The three-judge appeals panel had agreed to hear arguments about the constitutionality of the wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as it was amended by the Patriot Act.

Justice Department lawyers argue that other U.S. courts have upheld the searches, which are authorized not by a federal magistrate, but by a specially-created FISA court. High-level Justice Department officials must first certify the need for the wiretaps for national-security purposes.

"In order to effectively conduct counterespionage, you need the kind of protections FISA has (established)," Gross argued. "You simply can't have the same kind of disclosures."

The yearlong investigation began in 2007 after a clerk at a Circuit City store told police that some customers had asked him to transfer onto DVD some video footage of them firing assault weapons and screaming about jihad.

The defense also argued on appeal that the FBI used dubious informants to entrap the young men and that their taped discussions amounted to little more than a religious debate about jihad, or holy war.

U.S. appellate judges hearing the case debated whether U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler was right to let prosecutors play beheading videotapes to the jury. The tapes did not relate to any of the defendants.

A defense lawyer argued that jurors turned against his clients after seeing the tapes, although the actual beheadings were not shown in court.

Appeals Court Judge Marjorie Rendell said the violent tapes may show the defendants' state of mind, since they watched them obsessively. But her colleague, Judge Theodore McKee, disagreed.

"It's an example of blatantly overtrying the case. That said, I'm not saying it's reversible (error)," McKee said.

The judges did not indicate when they would rule.

Four of the defendants had attended public high school in Cherry Hill, N.J. The men include Shnewer, a Jordanian-born cab driver; Tatar, a Turkish-born convenience store clerk; and the Dukas, ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, who had a roofing business

A few dozen members of the local Muslim community, including the Dukas' parents, filled one section of the courtroom.

All three brothers are being held in a maximum-security prison in Colorado, their mother said.

"They are together, but they can't see each other," Cuzurada Duka, 52, told The Associated Press.

She insists her sons were egged on by the FBI informants who visited the family home. She has only been able to visit them once in Colorado.

"They were OK, because they are strong. They know they are innocent. They know one day the truth will come out," she said.

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Younger Fla. imam pleads not guilty in terror case (AP)

MIAMI – A Muslim cleric in Florida has pleaded not guilty to charges of supporting the Pakistani Taliban terrorist group.

The plea was entered Friday in federal court in Miami by 24-year-old Izhar Khan, imam of a mosque in suburban Margate.

Khan's 76-year-old father, Hafiz Muhammad Sher Ali Khan, previously pleaded not guilty. Another of his sons, 37-year-old Irfan Khan, is expected in Miami next week following his arrest in May in Los Angeles.

The Khans and three other people living in Pakistan are charged with conspiracy and providing material support to the Pakistani Taliban. Prosecutors say they provided at least $50,000 to the terror group, which has been involved in numerous violent attacks and plots.

The Khans are being held without bail. The four charges carry 15-year maximum prison terms.

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Top gov. witness in terror trial returns to stand (AP)

By SOPHIA TAREEN and EILEEN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Sophia Tareen And Eileen Sullivan, Associated Press – 57 mins ago

CHICAGO – The federal government's star witness was expected to reveal more potentially damaging details on Tuesday about the alleged close ties between Pakistan's main intelligence agency and the militant group blamed for the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks.

David Coleman Headley returned to witnesses stand in the terrorism trail of a Chicago businessman accused of collaborating in the three-day siege of India's largest city — a day after gave a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba and described how he was recruited by a member of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as ISI, to take part in the Mumbai plot.

As the government's first and main witness in the trial of his longtime friend Tahawwur Rana, Headley's testimony outlining links between the ISI and Lashkar could inflame tensions between Pakistan and India and place even more pressure on the already frayed U.S. and Pakistani relations.

It also could add to the questions about Pakistan's commitment to catch terrorists and the ISI's connections to Pakistan-based terror groups, especially after Osama bin Laden was found hiding out earlier this month in a military garrison town outside of Islamabad.

Headley already pleaded guilty to laying the groundwork for the Mumbai attacks that killed more than 160 people including six Americans, and he agreed to testify against Rana to avoid the death penalty, making him one of the most valuable U.S. government counterterrorism witnesses.

"Headley's testimony is a nail in the coffin of U.S.-Pakistani strategic cooperation," said Bruce Riedel, a former White House adviser on Middle Eastern and South Asian issues. "Until now his commentary has gotten very little attention outside India, now it will finally get the attention it deserves here."

The Pakistani government has denied the ISI orchestrated the Mumbai attacks, and a senior ISI official said Tuesday that the agency has no links to the terrorists behind the rampage. When asked about the testimony being heard in Chicago, the officer said "it is nothing." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because his agency doesn't allow its operatives to be named in the media.

On Monday, Headley, a Pakistani-American, spent hours detailing the formulation of the attacks and Rana's alleged help in providing cover for his surveillance activities in India.

Speaking so softly at times that attorneys had to remind him to speak louder, Headley said he has been involved with Lashkar-e-Taiba for more than a decade, but he wasn't working with someone in the ISI until years later after he was arrested by tribal police near Afghanistan. It was then he said he met a major in the ISI and told him what he and Lashkar were planning.

This ISI major, Headley said, was "very pleased" with what he heard and asked if Headley would work with one of his ISI associates. Headley agreed and said he was released from custody. Headley soon received a call from a man he referred to during his testimony as "Major Iqbal," which the U.S. government says is an alias. Headley said he then met Iqbal in a safe house in Lahore, Pakistan and described his plans with Lashkar and his assignment to take videos of Mumbai in preparation of an operation.

Headley said ISI provided financial and military assistance to Lashkar, and he assumed they worked under the same umbrella. He said Iqbal and his Lashkar handler, Sajid Mir, were in communication, but he would meet with them separately in Pakistan. Headley said when he would take videos of sights in Mumbai, he would first share them with Iqbal and then with Mir.

"All these things I discussed with Major Iqbal, I went over it with Sajid again," Headley told jurors.

Before moving to Mumbai in late 2006, Headley said he first came to Chicago, met with Rana and explained the plot in hopes of persuading Rana to let him open a branch of his immigration services business as a cover. With Rana's help, Headley said he set up an immigration consulting business in Mumbai and secured work visas to travel in and out of India..

Rana, a Canadian citizen who has lived in Chicago for years, has pleaded not guilty in the case. His name is the seventh one on the federal indictment, and the only defendant in custody. Among the six others charged in absentia are Mir and Iqbal.

Rana is also accused of helping arrange travel and other help for Headley, who planned a separate attack that never happened on a Danish newspaper, which printed cartoons of Prophet Muhammad that angered Muslim.

Headley and Rana, both 50, met as classmates at a prestigious military boarding school in Pakistan and have stayed in touch. Defense attorneys told jurors their client was taken advantage of by his friend and did not know what was in store. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker said Rana was not duped and knew of the plans, both in Mumbai and Denmark.

Defense attorneys were expected scrutinize Headley's credibility as a witness, saying he has been motivated to change his story and that he was working for the U.S. government even as he said he was working for Lashkar and ISI.

Headley, born Daood Gilani in the U.S., has also been an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration after a drug conviction.

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